Saturday, October 25, 2008

A Turkish court has tried a man accused of selling gay and group sex videos. While homosexuality is not illegal in Turkey it is still considered taboo and LGBT people face many legal restrictions. The court could have charged him with selling "unnatural sex" videos but instead charged him with a lower level crime of selling the videos in an illegal location.

"In its verdict, the Istanbul court said: Most European countries have given gay relationships the equivalence of marriage, and in Holland gay marriages were made legal a few years back. In a world of modern societies, it is not possible to say intercourse among members of the same sex is unnatural.

The verdict also read: Since the action happens in private places and does not include children it is not criminal. The term unnatural sexual behavior' should be seen from a narrow perspective; otherwise there is the risk of judging every sexual relationship outside of certain limitations unnatural. It is without doubt that the images are eccentric. Although this kind of sexual activity is not common in societies, it is a fact that in every society collective sexual relationships exist." (Turkish Daily News)

This is a significant gay rights development in Turkey, a country that typically shuns homosexuality while struggling to be accepted into the European Union and advance as a modern nation.